


After Laughter

by Unread



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, drinking wine and gossiping basically, mentions of past rape, post-S8E4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 16:18:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18898228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unread/pseuds/Unread
Summary: “Why are you sitting with him, anyway?” Arya asks abruptly, eyeing Sansa and then the Hound pointedly. “What were you talking about?”He makes a grumbling noise and snatches the wine jug back from Arya and tops up his goblet. Sansa holds out her cup to him patiently, and after a resigned scowl, he fills it too. She smiles at him, and then says to Arya, “Podrick stole his woman and I was consoling him.”Arya’s eyebrows raise, and she looks at the Hound with an evil grin. “I don’t blame her. Pod’s a hell of a lot better looking.”The Hound snorts and drinks his wine. He doesn’t seem to disagree with her.Sansa hesitates for just a moment before saying, very measuredly, “Actually, I don’t think he is.”





	After Laughter

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretending that the Arya/Gendry proposal scene happens BEFORE the Sansa/Sandor scene for the purposes of this fic. It diverges from canon immediately after Sansa takes her hand from Sandor's. Hope you enjoy it!

Sansa takes her hand off his, revelling a little in the Hound’s stunned expression as the guttering candlelight plays over his scarred face. She feels strangely satisfied with their conversation. She had shown him how strong she was now, and she had seen in turn that the idea she’d had of him for so long held true -- that although he was crude and surly, he was a good man where it truly mattered.

She’s about to get up and leave him to his wine when Ayra appears from nowhere, cramming herself down onto the seat next to Sansa before she can move.

“That wine?” Arya asks, and then takes the Hound’s jug and pours herself a goblet without waiting for an answer.

The almost-soft, stunned look on the his face disappears instantly and he glares at Arya. “That’s my fucking wine.”

“And now it’s mine,” Arya says.

His glare gets heavier and more menacing, but Arya is totally indifferent to it. Sansa finds it strangely amusing. The three of them sit in silence for a little while, until Sansa realises that these two could probably sit in silence forever. Knowing that Arya had avoided the feast that was partially in her honour, she asks, “Where have you been tonight?”

“Shooting arrows.”

“Of course you were,” Sansa says, and it’s both exasperated and fond.

“The blacksmith was looking for you,” the Hound says suddenly, with a twisted smirk.

“He found me,” Arya says, taking an indifferent sip of her wine. “He proposed.”

The Hound guffaws into his wine goblet and Sansa turns to stare at her. “ _What_?”

“I said no. He wanted me to be his lady at Storm’s End.”

“You don’t want to be a lady,” Sansa says.

“No, I don’t.” She looks a bit sad, and Sansa realises she must have broken poor Gendry’s heart tonight. She’d known about him, that Arya liked him, and she even suspected that they’d shared a bed. Honestly, she couldn’t begrudge her sister that kind of comfort, even when Gendry had just been a blacksmith and not Lord Baratheon of Storm’s End. Sansa wishes, just a little, that she could take comfort in such things too.

“Why are you sitting with him, anyway?” Arya asks abruptly, eyeing Sansa and then the Hound pointedly. “What were you talking about?”

He makes a grumbling noise and snatches the wine jug back from Arya and tops up his goblet. Sansa holds out her cup to him patiently, and after a resigned scowl, he fills it too. She smiles at him, and then says to Arya, “Podrick stole his woman and I was consoling him.”

Arya’s eyebrows raise, and she looks at the Hound with an evil grin. “I don’t blame her. Pod’s a hell of a lot better looking.”

The Hound snorts and drinks his wine. He doesn’t seem to disagree with her.

Sansa hesitates for just a moment before saying, very measuredly, “Actually, I don’t think he is.”

The Hound chokes, sputters, and then stares at her in disbelief. Arya makes a gagging noise. “Oh gods, Sansa. That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said. Please tell me you’re joking.”

Sansa presses her lips together to try and contain her smile. “No. Podrick’s not really my type.”

“And _he_ is? How much wine have you had?”

“He’s not so bad,” Sansa says. The Hound’s dark eyes are fixed on her, wide and frozen in astonishment like they’d been when she’d touched his hand. She’s starting to feel a bit warm.

“He’s worse than bad.” Arya sounds genuinely aghast, as if Sansa had just something unimaginably awful.

“I don’t think so,” she says calmly, even though she’s beginning to feel less so with both of them looking at her. She takes another sip of her wine.

The Hound’s eyes bore deeply into her, and there’s a good dose of the old familiar anger in them now. He looks deadly. “Are you mocking me?”  

Sansa’s chest squeezes, but not in fear. She realises then that many women _would_ mock him, and probably had over the years. Perhaps that was why he’d scared that serving girl away. “No, I’m serious. You look good. Handsome, even. I like the beard.”

He opens his mouth but says nothing. The anger melts away, replaced by shock again. And maybe even some discomfort. “You really have fucking changed if you think that, little bird.”

“Yeah, I think she’s definitely had too much wine,” Ayra says, staring at Sansa like she’d lost her mind. “I’m telling Pod you think the Hound’s better looking than him.”

“He won’t mind.”

“I’d mind if I were him.”

“For fuck’s sake, would you both stop fucking talking about me,” the Hound says, his voice low and full of gravel. “And Podrick fucking Payne.”

“We could talk about Brienne and Jaime Lannister instead,” Arya says, smirking. “I saw him following her to her chambers.”

“Really?” Sansa says. “I’m glad for her, I suppose. But he doesn’t deserve her.”

“Please tell me you don’t think the Hound’s better looking than Jaime Lannister,” Arya says, taking a huge gulp of her wine.

Sansa smiles, watching her. And very carefully not looking at the Hound. She shrugs slightly. “I prefer dark hair.”

“Well, at least he has two hands,” Arya says with an evil chuckle, but then stops and frowns a little. “You know he thinks you’re pretty?”

“Who? Jaime Lannister?” Sansa says, confused.

“No, _him_ ,” Arya says, pointing her wine goblet at the Hound. “He used to talk about you all the time when we were travelling together.”

“Shut up, you little bitch,” the Hound growls, looking thoroughly murderous now.

Arya glares at him, humour completely gone. She looks at Sansa and says,  “He once told me he wished he’d fucked you bloody.”

There’s dead silence at the table. The words hang heavy in the air and in Sansa’s head. _Fucked you bloody._ She feels a familiar coldness sink into her body, replacing the warmth that had been kindling there. She wonders if that was what it was like to be a White Walker, ice water instead of blood, freezing all emotions. She looks at the Hound, and it’s like he’s suddenly far away, frozen beneath the surface of a lake, something she no longer can recognise. She sits her goblet carefully back down on the table and, says with cool detachment, “Ramsay beat you to it, here in this castle.”

She stands and leaves without looking back. Once outside the great hall, she can hear the sounds of celebration and drunken carousing, but it’s like she’s on the other side of it now, disconnected from it. The feeling of emptiness threatens to overwhelm her as she walks, until she realises Arya’s following behind her and irritation sets in instead.

“Sansa,” she says, but Sansa keeps walking. Arya catches up to walk next to her. “Sansa, I’m sorry.”

“Leave me alone, please,” Sansa says. It comes out sounding more tired than truly annoyed.

“He didn’t...I don’t think he meant it. He was trying to get me to kill him.”

Sansa stops abruptly and turns to look at her. “Why would he do that?”

“Brienne had just fought him and his leg was broken.”

Sansa frowns, trying to take it in. “If that’s so then why did you bring it up?”

Arya shifts, looking vaguely ashamed for the first time since they’d been reunited. She was a bit Bran-like in that regard, although she had been getting better lately. “I didn’t like him wanting you like that. You shouldn’t encourage him.”

“How did I encourage him?”

Arya stares at her. “You said he was handsome.”

“You think Gendry’s handsome,” Sansa retorts, because she can’t deny it.

“Gendry _is_ handsome. Plus he’s nice and a good person.”

“So is the Hound. In his own way. Or at least I thought he was. He saved you during the battle, didn’t he?”

“That doesn’t make up for all the horrible things he’s done.”

“So you think he’s irredeemable?”

“I don’t know. But you still deserve better than him.”

Sansa smiles at her, although it’s a sad smile. “I can’t help what I feel. It’s nice, feeling attraction to someone. For a long time after Ramsay I couldn’t imagine it.”

Arya pulls a face, then lets out a resigned sigh and suddenly hugs her. It catches Sansa by surprise, but she wraps her arms around her sister tightly. “If he does anything you don’t want, I’ll kill him for you.”

Sansa huffs a laugh into Arya’s hair. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Arya pulls back and looks at her. “He won’t, though. He’d let you walk all over him like a Dornish rug and be thankful for it.”

Sansa smiles, and feels the pressure inside her release again. She hadn’t been mistaken in him. He said awful things, he always had, but it was what he did that counted. He’d saved them both, and he’d come to fight the dead for no reason Sansa could determine except that it was the right thing to do. Actions always did speak louder than words. She wished yet again she’d learnt that lesson sooner. “I’m sorry about you and Gendry,” she says, gently smoothing down a wayward lock of Arya’s hair.

Arya face twists. “He’ll get over it. Eventually.”

“But will you?”

She gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Eventually.”

Sansa smiles softly. “Well. I think I’ll go to bed now anyway.”

Arya nods and says, “‘Night, Sansa,” and then turns back in the direction she came.

Sanas continues on through the darkened corridors, feeling lighter. She’s still angry with him, a little, but the sense she’d had of what kind of man he was has been restored, and it’s a relief.

As she nears her chambers, the feeling of being followed hits her. She stops walking and turns around, looking down the length of the dark corridor.  

“Who’s there?” she says, suddenly wishing Ghost was with her. Visions of the dead take over her mind for a moment, coming out of the darkness at her just like they had in the crypts.

“Didn’t mean to spook you,” a familiar voice rasps from the shadows, and the Hound slinks into view. Her fear vanishes instantly. It’s quite incredible that a man so large can look so reduced, just from the expression on his face. Guilt.

It bolsters her own confidence. She says, rather primly, “After what happened two nights ago, can you blame me?”

“No.” He shifts awkwardly, and can’t seem to look her in the eyes. She remembers what he’d said to her not a half-hour ago, when they were sitting in the great hall. _Used to be you couldn’t look at me._ It almost makes her laugh. But she maintains her cool demeanor and asks, “Why are you here?”

“I don’t fucking know. Don’t ask me.”

Sansa narrows her eyes at him. “Arya told you to come after me.”

He hesitates and then says, “Aye, she did. Told her you’d rather see one of those undead fuckers than me right now, but she convinced me. Said she’d stab me with that fucking dagger of hers if I didn’t.” He looks rather baffled by it.

“Well, you are more pleasant than the dead,” Sansa says, and then gives him a cool smile. “But only just.”

He huffs out a laugh, and but still can’t seem to look her in the face. “I’ve never taken a woman against her will,” he says abruptly. “I’m not my fucking brother, and I’m not that Bolton cunt.”

“I know you aren’t.”

“I said it to piss off your fucking bitch sister. There was a bone sticking out of my leg and I didn’t want to spend a week dying. I was trying to get her to stick me with her sword.” The words tumble out of him like offerings to a god.

“Yes, she told me.”

He looks at her, and Sansa tries not to think the word ‘hang-dog’ but it’s terribly appropriate. She decides to put him out of his misery and says, with much less ice in her voice, “How did you survive, then?”

He seems to read the softening in her expression, because some of the tension falls away from him. “Laid there for three days after your sister buggered off, until a septon found me. Don’t much remember it. But he and his people took me in and healed me.”

“A septon? Truly?” There was something perversely amusing about the Hound, the most irreligious person Sansa had ever met, being cared for by a group of worshippers.

“I don’t believe in the gods. But he was a good man,” he says, and it’s almost as if he finds the admittance shameful.

“Why did you leave them?”

His face goes dark. “Some fuckers murdered the lot of them while I wasn’t there. Men, women, children. And that septon. Strung him from the fucking sept I was helping them build.”

Sadness and rage vie for place on the Hound’s face. Sansa stares at him, mesmerised.  She asks, already suspecting the answer, “Did you kill the men who did it?”

He focuses on her again, as if pulled from those terrible events back to the present. “Aye, I did. Some of them, anyway. And I watched the rest die.”

“Good.”

His mouth twists up a fraction. “You’re a bloodthirsty one now, little bird.”

“Only when it’s deserved,” she says, and smiles at him.

“You believe me then? That I wouldn’t have hurt you.” There’s equal parts hope and fear in his gruff voice.

“I believe you. I knew you wouldn’t back in King’s Landing, too. You were one of the few people who never lied to me.”

“Aye, and you hated me for it.”

“I never hated you. Not back then, and not now.”

He doesn’t say anything, just watches her. She looks back at him too, each of them standing on opposite sides of the ill-lit corridor. The sound of celebrating is still filtering in, even this deep into the castle, but this time Sansa doesn’t feel so separate from it. She doesn’t feel that quiet loneliness she has never been able to shake, even after she got her brothers and sister back. It’s a breathless feeling.

“Sandor?” she says, a question in the word. It’s the first time she’s ever said his name aloud.

He goes very still, and his unburnt eyebrow raises in surprise. She wonders how long it has been since someone has called him by his first name. “What?” he says uncertainly.

“Do you want me?”

There’s a heavy silence, but she’s content to wait him out. Finally he says, “You know I do, little bird.”

“Well, I want you too.” He starts a little at that, his dark eyes wide. She continues, “The problem is that I don’t know if I can...we’re going to have to go slow. Do you understand me?”

“Aye, I understand,” he says, his voice a low rasp. He’s looking at her intently now, eyes shifting across her face like she’s a book he’s trying to read. “You got burned and now you’re scared of the fire.”

Her heart twists and she nods, unable to speak. She crosses the corridor to stand close to him, so she can reach up and brush his long hair away from the scarred side of his face. “Exactly,” she says, her voice a soft breath.

“I won’t burn you, little bird,” he whispers, and it sounds like a promise.

She smiles and feeling brave, presses a kiss to his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> [Ye Olde Tumblr](https://lookslikeaquentinblakedrawing.tumblr.com/)


End file.
